Television: His Dark Materials - Audience and Industry

Television: His Dark Materials - Audience and Industry 

Audience:

1) I think the target audience for His Dark Materials is mostly teenagers and young adults. I believe that it is not particularly young audiences such as children, due to some themes in the series being violent. The series was rated 14+ by HBO and 12 by the BBFC, which demonstrates that the target audience would be adolescents and older. The psychographic groups may be Explorers and Aspirers or Succeeders, as the series involves strong, determined characters; the audiences may be able to relate to or identify with them. 

2)  Audience Pleasures: 

• Personal Identity: The show has a wide diverse cast and a large amount of characters, whose personalities are three-dimensional; the audience can identify with them. Furthermore, teenagers especially can identify with many of the characters as there is a wide representation of characters who frequently subvert and reinforce stereotypes.
• Personal Relationships: The narrative stretches across many episodes, rather than having an episodic structure; the audience can form relationships with the characters as they follow their storyline. They can form personal relationships with many of the characters that they can view as being similar to them, especially the protagonists and frequently appearing characters. 
• Diversion: The series follows a fantasy world and is of the fantasy genre; following the storyline can become a form of escapism for the audience. Furthermore, the plot and character interactions can also provide a diversion for the audience. 

3) The Three Vs: 

• Visceral Pleasures: The episode has a wide variety of actions, such as between Mrs Coulter and the witches, which provide a physical thrill for the audience. 
• Voyeuristic Pleasures: The world created and fantasy elements may provide voyeuristic pleasures for the audience; the audience will have seen new elements of worlds that do not exist. 
• Vicarious Pleasures: Linking to the previous point, the audience may find escapism through the characters. The fantasy elements within the episode would be experienced through the characters in the show.

4) Many fans reacted positively. The critics have said that the series is strong and features many good actors and actresses, who have created the world very well from the one in the books. However, the episodes have lost the in-depth quality they had in the books; a critic from the Independent said that the daemons were not as interesting and well-created as they had been in the books. A lot of the books have been adapted, making the series not nearly as interesting. 

5) The preferred reading may be that the fans enjoy the representation of the fantasy genre within His Dark Materials, as the use of Daemons, Spectres and Witches has been exemplified with more detail. Furthermore, the subverting of stereotypes has been done to introduce a diverse cast of wider, three-dimensional characters. The preferred reading that links to this may be that the fans would enjoy the diversity and representations. However, the oppositional reading may be that the fantasy genre contains themes of horror, which are unsuitable for younger audiences and therefore overshadow the purpose of the main book series, which had been intended to be projected towards younger audiences. Furthermore, the series can be seen to be slightly anti-christian, despite not directly attacking religion. The oppositional reading for this may be a pro-Christian perspective, where the views shown in the series are disagreed with.

Industries:

1) The series was commissioned for the BBC by HBO and created by the independent company, Bad Wolf. 

2) The first episode of the first series was watched by 7.2 million people in the UK and 423,000 on HBO. The first broadcasts of Season 2, Episode 1 had audiences of 4.4 million on BBC1 and 227,000 on HBO. This shows that fewer people watched the second series compared to the first series.

3) HBO is an American TV company that is well-known for producing some of the greatest TV shows. HBO has over 40 million subscribers and around $7 billion in subscription revenue each year. They have made HDM extremely well by increasing the quality and making the show more accessible to fans in the US. 

4) Lin Manuel-Miranda, star of Hamilton, was selected to increase the popularity of the show internationally, especially in the US. This may have also been done to gain more money at more levels of marketing. Furthermore, Ruth Wilson and James McAvoy have also been shown as they have been in many films and have attracted a wide audience. 

5) Bad Wolf is an independent company that creates ambitious, imaginative and relevant drama for global TV. It produced over 50 hours of high-end drama for broadcasters and networks including HBO, BBC, AMC and Sky.

Comparison: 

1) In Doctor Who, the quality is significantly worse because it was made earlier. The camerawork is more shaky and less strong, and the music is also of worse quality. the angles are also similar and less adventurous. In HDM, the camerawork is of better quality and the camera angles are used to create suspense and of course, the quality is much better.

2) His Dark Materials may contain elements of sci-fi as is shown in DW, but overall is more fantasy-centred rather than focused more on science fiction. The narrative is similar as it is embedded in all episodes in both series. However, in HDM, the narrative continues across all episodes, whereas in Doctor Who, the main narrative continues, but smaller subplots end at the end of each episode. 

3) In Doctor Who, the traditional sense of white men is exemplified to be superior to women and ethnic minorities. There is no mention of a person of colour. However, in HDM, the show is much more diverse and features a wider variety of ethnic minorities, demonstrating the more modern, developed nature of it. It also demonstrates the lack of diversity within the 1960s or 1900s as a whole, while there is a much more diverse approach within the 21st century. Furthermore, teenagers are represented differently in the aspects of gender. Teenagers in His Dark Materials are shown to be brave, courageous and noble, while teenagers in Doctor Who are shown as quite the opposite. They are presented as foolish or reckless, dangerous in aspects of the focus of the first episode, and stupid in terms of females. In His Dark Materials, Lyra is shown to be a strong-willed individual, independent in her own right and clever, as she can think on her feet. Even other teenagers and females are shown to be just as independent, willing and passionate. Doctor Who simplifies its women and characterises them as nothing short of foolish, with two-dimensional personalities and a dependence on the men around them.